First look: Roku Channel Store expands connected set-top box

Roku has significantly expanded the available channels for its tiny streaming …

Roku—makers of a diminutive set-top box originally designed to stream content for Netflix's Watch Instantly feature—has officially opened a "Channel Store," giving users access to a wider variety of content. The store is stocked with 10 "channels" that users can add, enabling easy access to Facebook photos, Pandora streams, TWiT.tv podcasts, and more. The setup is a little cumbersome, and Roku's simple interface doesn't handle large numbers of options well, but what is available so far shows a lot of promise. If some bigger names in content—Hulu, are you listening?—were to sign on to make channels, the service would truly be an excellent replacement for cable. Right now, it offers an enticing view of what the future of television could be.

The Roku Digital Video Player originally began as a set-top box to enable streaming of Netflix's Watch Instantly feature directly to users' TVs. Eventually, the project was spun off into its own company shortly before launch. The hardware itself is quite small, connects easily to any TV, and is dead-simple to use, which made it quite popular with Netflix subscribers. The original device, now called the Roku HD, has also spawned two additional variations: the lower-cost Roku SD and the expandable Roku HD-XR.

The Roku's utility was increased significantly with the addition of access to Amazon Video on Demand content, which gave the device access to a wider variety of TV shows and movies that weren't available for streaming via Netflix. Access to Amazon VoD made the Roku a better alternative to the Apple TV and its integration with the iTunes Store, and gave non-Netflix subscribers a reason to consider the device. Most recently, the addition of the MLB.tv channel offered access to live and on-demand streaming of Major League Baseball games.

To expand content options even further, Roku developed the Roku Channel Store. Here, content providers can offer channels to access whatever content they choose from a secure platform. So far, all of the channels currently available are free, but the infrastructure is in place to offer whole channels or even individual streams for a fee.

"The Roku Channel Store turns the Roku player into the world's first open platform designed specifically for the TV," said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, in a statement. "Now content producers and distributors—from single person shops to billion dollar corporations—can deliver their content directly to consumers without having to go exclusively through cable operators, satellite networks or TV affiliates."

To kick off its channel store, Roku has put together a fairly broad collection of 10 channels. This includes:

blip.tv, a collection of a variety of mostly short, episodic video content

Flickr, which lets you view slideshows of your Flickr sets or popular images from other members

FrameChannel, a photo and social status aggregator

MediaFly, an aggregator of video and audio podcasts

MobileTribe, yet another social network aggregator

MotionBox, a YouTube-like video sharing service

Pandora, the personalized Internet radio service

Revision3, probably the most respected Internet-based "TV station" with shows like Diggnation and Tekzilla

TWiT.tv, a collection of tech-related podcasts—including Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech—which are currently audio-only

So far the price (free) seems about right for what's offered (some content, such as that from TWiT.tv and Revision3, are already ad-supported). Roku told us that other content providers are in the process of developing more channels, and anyone interested in creating a channel can do so by contacting Roku and requesting a software development kit. Unlike a number of newer "media drives" which offer various access to some online content, Roku is providing a platform for anyone to essentially create a "plug-in" to add access to additional content to the set-top box.

You can link multiple Roku boxes to your Roku account.

Setting up is hard to do

We got to spend some quality time with some of the new channels this weekend, and we wanted to give you our impressions of what's available now, and what we hope this means for the future of media access.

The first thing that you need to do is set up an account on Roku's website. This process is straightforward and required minimal information input. No credit card information is required at this time, since no channels currently require a fee, but your Roku account will be used for pay content in the future. Here you use Roku's code process to connect your device to your account. A nice benefit of this is that you can connect multiple devices to your account, which will synchronize your channel set-up from one device to another. It will also synchronize progress states, so if you pause a show in the living room, for instance, you can continue right where you left off in the bedroom. However, we discovered that channels that require connecting to an online account require the somewhat laborious process (described below) to be repeated for each device separately.

Simply adding a channel is just the first step for most services, which are usually linked to a specific user account and require further authorization steps.

Facebook Photos

The Facebook Photos channel lets you connect your Facebook account to your Roku to browse your photos, your friends photos, or the "photo feed" of recently uploaded photos from your contacts. Here we'll demonstrate the set-up process in some detail, as it ensures secure access but is somewhat cumbersome.

First, you choose Facebook Photos from the Channel Store, and then add it. Once added, the channel needs to be set up before it can access your account. This is quite similar to the setup process for connecting a Roku player to your Netflix account, but there are some additional complications due to Facebook's own security authorization.

You will be directed to load a particular Facebook URL, which will offer you the option of approving Roku to access your account. Then, you can request a code that will keep your device connected to your Facebook account. This alpha-numeric code is then entered on the Roku using the remote—typing in codes this way is not unlike the text entry on an Apple TV, which is to say not very good. Once connected, you can access your own photos and those of your friends. To view the photo feed, though, there's an additional authorization step—it seems like an unnecessary annoyance, given how much is already required to set up access in the first place.

After you add the Facebook Photos channel, you still have to go through a multi-step account authorization process before it'll connect to your account.

At this point Hulu is the holy grail for set-top boxes. Until Hulu decides whether it's even playing that game (hi, subscription services!) it will make much more sense to use a small HTPC instead of a limited STB.

Anyone compared this to the WD Play Live thing (which is on special on slickdeals for $99)? I'd be interested in opinions. They seem like they are mutually exclusive in capabilities. Would love them mashed together.

Meh.... the box is still stereo only. I hate having to watch movies with only stereo output..... where is 5.1 output.. it has optical out after all!!! ENABLE 5.1 output!!!! Until then... the Apple TV blows this thing away, even though I have to pay per view when I rent movies, not to mention the quality of the HD movies on the Apple TV is WAY higher than on my Roku box through Netflix.

Originally posted by shank2001:Meh.... the box is still stereo only. I hate having to watch movies with only stereo output..... where is 5.1 output.. it has optical out after all!!! ENABLE 5.1 output!!!! Until then... the Apple TV blows this thing away, even though I have to pay per view when I rent movies, not to mention the quality of the HD movies on the Apple TV is WAY higher than on my Roku box through Netflix.

Umm you do have 5.1 audio - not sure what your are trying to do here mister Apple love...

In my experiance the Roku works great, and HD videos are perfect, and if they have 5.1, it will play 5.1 (you just need to turn it on in the settings, you also have to know that I dont think NETFLIX does 5.1 but amazon VOD does.)

Renting HD, or purchasing HD TV series from amazon delivers a perfect picture... You just need to make sure you have the bandwidth...

I like the Roku box ... I got one of the 1st 200 orders ... and some of the off the wall stuff on those new channels is interesting ... like "Old Jews Telling Jokes" for example...

I don't like their deceptive advertising practices though ... the $79.99 price they are hyping is only for the standard definition model ... The HD model (which is what most people would be interested in) is $119.99